Occupational safety organizations across the globe are intensifying their protocols, with the most common improvements going to reporting requirements, tightened definitions, and heightened workplace safety standards. This is in response to many businesses not taking their emergency measures seriously enough. In fact, only 36 percent of companies across the globe had an actual emergency response plan, a survey by Arizona State U found. Ensuring employee health and safety is critical to business productivity, but failure to meet the required standards poses a significant threat to the very existence of the business itself.
Anti-retaliation and intimidation laws have ramped up
Failure to follow safety guidelines alone can be grounds for a lawsuit, as there is enough evidence to suggest reckless endangerment. In the event that an employee decides to take you to court for that, odds would already be stacked against you. This is why it’s so important to have safety guidelines in place and follow them to the letter, according to https://www.fvflawfirm.com/. You can make the situation even worse for yourself if you decide to take drastic actions, such as pre-emptively firing or threatening concerned employees. Such moves can make you liable for retaliation and intimidation, and punishments for these offenses have gotten heavier across many jurisdictions.
Best practices in this new workplace safety landscape
More stringent protections are being put in place for employees who whistleblow or attempt to correct faulty safety procedures in their workplace. Thus, the best move for business owners would be to take every possible measure to ensure that their staff are happy with the level of workplace safety they are being subjected to. Otherwise, you may be compelled to pay an extensive set of damages. This includes compensation for lost wages and reimbursement for all expenses incurred as a result of unemployment, including emotional pain and distress, as well as all termination benefits.
Both employees and employers stand to benefit by ensuring that the workplace is up to standard. Employers have much to gain should they choose to heed their employees’ warnings, and everything to lose otherwise. With reporting standards and employee protections growing more robust among many occupational health and safety jurisdictions, employees no longer have anything to fear if they see fit to question their workplace’s adherence to standards. On the one hand, their employers can listen to them and they will have a safer workplace. On the other, they can be ignored or retaliated against, and be rewarded greatly if they choose to blow the whistle.
The key takeaways here are that employers now have to be extra cautious about their actions and that employees can now afford to be extra confident when questioning the workplace conditions they’re being subjected to. The new regulations being put into place ensure that whatever the outcome, a workplace will still end up following the standard one way or another, or else cease to exist.
